Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Weekend Warrior Training

Temp:Wind Chill:Wind Speed:

EPP Training (Friday afternoon)

This room is a smaller version of the Main Power Plant that we have on station.Right now, under normal circumstances, the station and everything around it is fed power, heat, computer access by the Main Power Plant.If an event occurs that completely shuts down the Main Power Plant, we are going to need to get down to the Emergency Power Plant, get the generators warmed up and running, so we can maintain life support systems.

A few of us got together with the engineers and electricians to go through the steps to get that fired up.

It was definitely a coordinated effort…the engineers could get a generator turned on and warming up, and then it was the electrician’s turn to make sure that the right breakers were activated.

There was another step in the process, too. Another technician had to make sure that the glycol, our heat exchange system, was flowing the right way, and actually heating/cooling the right areas.

It was a great process to go through, and get familiar with what would need to happen during such an event!

Thanksgiving Dinner (Saturday evening)

Although we hit Thursday before everyone back home, we didn’t really sit down to celebrate until Saturday, but it was definitely worth the wait!Earlier on in the day, I made my way out to ARO to find out Cully had gotten there earlier on in the morning, and had done all the morning work before I showed up (that’s the bad news about sleeping in!!)We stuck around until early afternoon, I made a few Dobson measurements in the afternoon, since I slacked in the morning, and then we came back to the station, where we found we had about two hours before appetizers.Sooooo....it was game on!

Cully and I wheeled the ping pong table into the gym and proceeded to get through nine games before both of us had enough!I did better than my earlier performance, but the day went to him at 5-4.I did realize I didn’t have to continually return his serves to his strong side, I could shift to the other side of the table!Once I figured that out, I rallied to win a couple more games.It could be a long winter!